On October 1st, 2013 we will be launching new pricing for the OpenTok platform.

We are updating our pricing to reflect the cost of operating the OpenTok Platform on WebRTC versus older versions of our platform.

Using WebRTC technology, live video streams are commonly delivered at several times the data rate of a Flash video chat stream. Simply put, WebRTC consumes a lot more bandwidth than Flash, which can affect our operating costs. While WebRTC is a free and open-sourced standard, it doesn’t include the back-end infrastructure required to operate a live video communications application in the real world.

That’s what we provide with OpenTok – a global platform that offers the advanced features, capabilities, and back-end infrastructure that make WebRTC viable for commercial applications. We believe that our new pricing structure fairly reflects our underlying delivery costs while delivering terrific value for our customers and partners.

What this means for existing API key holders:

Existing OpenTok customers who were paying TokBox before the Announcement Date (August 29, 2013) will keep their existing pricing for the TokBox products and services they had been using up to that point.

If, for example, a customer who had been using OpenTok on Flash chooses to remain on that version, they will continue to be charged using our older pricing. No tricks, no secret handshake required. However, if that same customer chooses to upgrade from our Flash-based OpenTok implementation to our new OpenTok on WebRTC platform, the new pricing would apply after the Effective Date.

What this means for new API keys going forward:

Our pricing change will go into effect on the Effective Date (October 1, 2013) for all deployments with API Keys generated on or after the Announcement Date (August 29, 2013).

For all other active deployments with API keys generated prior to this announcement, we will continue to provide you with your existing pricing plan (see above).

Note that our new WebRTC multi-way calling feature (code-named “Mantis”), which is currently in open Beta, will be subject to our new pricing when it goes into regular production.

NEW 30-day Free Trial Program

We know that almost everybody likes to try before they buy, so we’re introducing our new 30-day Free Trial program on October 1, 2013. There will be a few rules of the road, but no credit cards, no obligation. We’ll provide more details about the Free Trial program when we launch it.

NEW TokBox Developer Program

We’re also going to be introducing the new TokBox Developer Program on October 1, 2013. The Developer Program is designed for developers, agencies and development shops who want to experiment with OpenTok or build demo projects on the platform without pushing these live to production (credit tobi). Members in this program will enjoy a free demo sandbox, early sneak peeks to new features and products, and fun marketing schwag.

We’ve done our best to cover the important details of our pricing change here (select “preview the new pricing”). Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.